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August Invest Solutions – EU
In this section we describe general investment and framework features for our global August Invest Solutions (AIS) and for those 4 standard products that are specifically designed for European (EUR) based investors. We label this particular product, AIS Europe , although of course, it is a global solution build to capture long-term equilibrium returns. Not for the Eurozone only, but the entire world.
Please refer to the "Basic Access" or "Premium Access" for information on updated suggested portfolio compositions, expected returns, expected risk and the associated ETF funds we recommend. As with all August Invest Solutions, AIS Europe can be downloaded for FREE as "ready-for-trade" standard solutions for 3 traditional risk profiles; low, medium and high.
Additionally, a Green and Climate-friendly alternative is offered in the August Invest Green solution. All profiles are calibrated to a high Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) score. AIS is a 100% passive and 90% robotized approach, and as such obviously differentiates from active management solutions in banks. AIS however, also differentiates from globally accessible index solutions, either in traditional asset management or on internet or even APP based platforms.
First, in the core framework,
- You can access an already professionally constructed and client-driven solution for FREE.
- You get 2 rebalanced solutions on 30.06 and 31.12 of every calendar year. For FREE.
- You pay ONLY for unavoidable costs in underlying ETF funds. But this is NOT to investmentexcel.com.
- You will not have to transfer wealth to a banking unit or Platform provider. Your portfolio assets stay with you.
- You are responsible for trading your portfolio according to the selected August Invest Solution.
Second, in the investment universe,
- All solutions have high ESG score as constraint
- All solutions have tight asset weight constraints
- All layers in investment are strictly passive and reactive to only long-term equilibrium conditions
AIS is consequently a super cost-efficient access to long-term globally responsible and diversified market returns. Investor in AIS is charged only with those small fees in the underlying and carefully selected passive (ETF) funds. All ETF funds fit into particular asset class groups and regions, that are identified in a quantitative algorithm founded on the principles defined by the work of Nobel Prize-taker Harry Markowitz (1952, 1959).
FREE Ready-for-trade Solutions
Investment Philosophy
The framework of AIS is founded on the principles of market efficiency. Full and fair access to market information and instantaneous price adjustments to this information, makes any investor's discretionary attempt to outsmart other market participants an act of irrationality.
At every point of time the market price fluctuates randomly around some true equilibrium intrinsic value of the asset. An investor can be lucky an buy the asset at a point of time, where it fluctuates below the true value. But, he can never set up a strategy or a "rule" to capture undervalued or overvalued assets. This follows logically from the premise of randomness. In finance no other scientists have contributed as much in this field as Professor Eugene Fama. Here are some of his famous quotes:
"Markets are efficient, but there are different dimensions of risk and those lead to different dimensions of expected returns. That's what people should be concerned with in their investment decisions and not with whether they can pick stocks, pick winners and losers among the various managers delivering basically the same product"
"I can't figure out why anyone invests in active management (…). Since I think everything is appropriately priced, my advice would be to avoid high fees"
After more than 50 years of vast theoretical and empirical research in the active-passive field, it still remains to be seen that active management at any level is a rational investor choice. Research unambiguously supports index management, and why today active management is still a trillion-dollar industry is a conundrum.
In the logical spirit of this strong academic support, August Invest Solutions as a concept, offers an umbrella of classical multi-asset fund-of-funds, implying that individual asset classes and potentially invest styles, are mimicked by underlying cost-efficient, liquid and heavily diversified funds. Most often Exchange Trading Funds (ETF). As such, it is a passive product, with no fees for any portfolio manager action, and no fees for portfolio managers trying to opportunistically outsmart the market in various cycles. It simply does not pay off.
No Opportunistic Active Trading
Investment Objective
Fama's axiom is not only of philosophical and perhaps even logical nature. It is empirically supported on all global financial markets, that 1) higher risk gives higher return and 2) Investors cannot predict the future path of asset prices. Why? Because the asset price is random beyond some risk-related trend linked to microeconomic and macroeconomic fundamentals. It follows that the optimal way of investing, is to access, as cheaply as possible, large diversified and optimized portfolios, that are constructed to reflect investor's individual risk-aversion. An individual investor choice based on the positive risk-return trade-off. Low risk low return. High risk high return.
Equilibrium Asset Allocationn - EAA
This is exactly what August Invest Solutions does. This is only what it does. It delivers core fat-free market returns that are identified by what is labelled "Equilibrium Asset Allocation" (EAA). EAA is the quantitative and qualitative tool, that bridges structural microeconomic and macroeconomic factors. In turn delivering long-term equilibrium market returns. AIS Europe portfolios are hence consistently indexed to a diversified representation of global financial return opportunities, but with a strong relatively strong European home-bias. We can see this from the portfolio constraints (when rebalanced).
Investment Constraints
All solutions are constructed subject to various individual constraints of,
- RISK – Volatility (from 5%-13% p.a.)
- Weights on asset classes and regions
- Weights on Responsibility Score (ESG factor)
- Weights on Green Climate Score (August Invest Green only)
- Weights on "Home-Bias"
Note that currency risk is not included as all portfolios are defined based on their domiciles. So, here in the case of EU investors, AIS portfolios have 100% USD exposure. The purpose of the constraints has two dimensions. First, that investor needs a "hard" target risk measure to relate to. This is defined by the classical "Risk" concept of standard deviation. Second, to build stable and cost-efficient portfolios, we need to add weights. August Invest Green is a special case, where a large exposure to global Green technology is required. The following hard risk measures apply,
All target risks and target weights are obtained exactly every time the portfolios are rebalanced, which is done as a minimum twice a year on the dates, 30.06 and 31.12 in a year. But it is most likely that there will be interim rebalancing due to trigger events in the global economy and/or financial markets. www.Investmentexcel.com will in any of these events be updated accordingly. The "Premium Access" offers an individual monitoring and notification whenever an individual AIS product is rebalanced.
In the 4 tables below, we demonstrate asset class and regional constraints for Europe based investors. As all solutions have a "Home-Bias" constraint, Europe equities and bonds have minimum and maximum weights that are globally disproportional.
ESG And Green Factors In August Invest
Investment Process
The basis of building the final AIS Europe, is our Fund Selection process. In this process global passive funds in terms of index mutual funds and Exchange Traded Funds are selected from a variety of parameters. Note only the cost-charge, but also opening period and asset-under-management (AuM).
Within the defined risk and constraint framework we build optimal risk-adjusted portfolios by maximizing returns with some not-too-complicated math. Actually, by applying algorithms that are standard in the financial industry today and can be traced almost 70 years back to Markowitz (1952, 1959). All constraints are "hard" and initially calibrated through a delicate process of allowing maximum pass-through of equilibrium market returns, whilst still avoiding unwelcome unbalanced portfolio allocations.
August Invest EAA uses BlackRock Inc
In the now optimized framework we achieve full diversification, because of the use of multi-security index funds. Also, we achieve the highest risk-adjusted returns given our assumptions from the EAA model given the Markowitz algorithm (link to optimization video). To support assumptions of future asset class returns in EAA, we rely to a very large extent on capital market assumptions of Blackrock Ltd. Classical variables as demographics, productivity and inflation all belong to a set of factors that theoretically and empirically determines future asset returns through structural impulses. These are the basis in BlackRock Inc and in August Invest Solutions.
Historical Risk and Return
The general portfolio profile of AIS Europe is subject to several sources of risk, including macroeconomic risk, geopolitical risk and climate risk. The portfolio has hardly any currency risk beyond the indirect exposure in the underlying global ETF funds which amounts to negligible risk. All, but a few ETF funds have EUR denomination. Portfolio cashflows stemming from dividends and buy/sale of the instruments is normally automatically converted to EUR. The last 10 years for which we analyze, have been a strong bull market in all assets, even government bonds. This is clear from the graph below,
In this chart the Spring 2019 suggested AIS, is simulated with fixed current weights, including dividends, coupons and cost-charge. In this way we assume that we kicked off AIS Europe with its Spring 2019 weights in February 2009. The most (expected) risky portfolio, August Invest Opportune has delivered very high returns. In the other end, August Invest Safe has delivered relatively low returns. Both return patterns that do not surprise given the positive risk-return relationship that we normally consider as "rule of thumb". Most striking is August Invest Green with lowest returns despite it actually having as high risk as Opportune. In a 120 months (10 years) summary table we have,
From the table it can be seen that the risk is not exactly equal to the target risk of each August Invest solution. The reason for this is that historical risk is not necessarily equivalent to expected risk, even with regular rebalancing. In the case of August Invest Green we expect 10% p.a. in risk although the historical risk is close to 13% p.a.
If we show the results in a risk-return diagram we clearly see the August Invest Green "anomaly". Against other August products and against classical portfolio model combinations of Global Equity and Bonds. Please note that the diagram corresponds to the famous Mean-Variance (MV) diagram in finance. Except, that this is historical combinations of risk and return, and not as in the literature, expected risk and return.
The first thing to note is that the 3 Low-Medium-High risk August Invest profiles constitute a line "north" of the line that can be visualized running through simple Equity/Bond benchmark (Benchmark) portfolios. This can be attributed to diversification and not costs as the benchmarks have identical cost-charge as the August Invest solutions.
Strong historical diversification
Higher return for same risk, of vice versa lower risk for same return. So, August Invest solutions work as it should according to Modern Portfolio Theory. Delivering higher risk-adjusted returns than even cost-equivalent portfolios. Still, August Invest Green falls off a very steep cliff. The "Green Technology" field has been and perhaps still is in its volatile infancy, and we don't expect this continue. So, we are confident in offering this solution as a climate-friendly alternative to the traditional portfolios with a risk of 10% p.a.
August Invest Green falls off a cliff
Academically speaking, we don't expect the "Green" product to be priced with such a low risk-reward. Although of course it can axiomally be argued that investors in "green" products accept lower return, relatively to an otherwise risk-equal asset.
In the following table, we describe in details the obtained annualized returns over the Morningstar standard horizons, 1Y, 3Y, 5Y and 10Y. Also, we provide the 10Y annualized standard error. We present data for August Invest and risk-equivalent Active Funds and Passive Funds from Robotized Platforms. Data are gross dividends, and net of cost-charge.
In general, we see very high returns on all horizons which reflects the bull market since the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2007-2009. We can visualize the risk-adjusted performance or return by applying the Sharpe Ratio. The strong performance of the traditional August Invest solutions appear in the top-3 ranking with ratios higher than 1. The primary driver behind the high general ranking of our solutions is the cost-charge structure.
Investment Cost-Charge (fees)
The low fee or cost structure of August Invest can be demonstrated by comparing to other index products that similarly to August Invest, include fund selection and optimization to a diversified but constrained portfolio. The cost difference is approximately 1% p.a. (Morningstar.com). The difference to the active fund is 2% p.a. (Morningstar.com).
The following chart illustration assumes an average fee of 0,25% p.a. across AIS Europe. Costs on more risky solutions in the AIS family is with the exception of August Invest Green lower. This is because it's cheaper to ETF replicate equity portfolios than bond portfolios. The current expected cost of the "ready-for-trade" solution is stated in the PDF access file available on this site.
From the chart it is clear that traditional index investments through multi-asset funds directly or through so-called robotized investment platforms, are relatively expensive as investor pays for the two layers of fund selection and optimization. Both layers are included for FREE in the August Invest products. Although different in price, August products and other diversified index products share the same feature of having only exposure to future equilibrium returns in the economy. The structural economic core between supply and demand of capital, and hence the price of capital. Market returns.
Active Funds Charge 25% Of Market Return
Active funds on the contrary, include several dimensions of active overlays to capture risk and returns deviations from structural building blocks. DAA, TAA and SAA in different versions all aim to harvest time-varying (cyclical) risk premia, on the premise they are predictable. In the below table we summarize the EUR impact of this cost difference in 10 years. We assume investor buys EUR 100.000 today in each of the 3 portfolio types. The market gross return is 8%% p.a.
From the chart it is obvious that active management is incredibly expensive. The 3 active layers of DAA, TAA and SAA have a price tag of EUR 43.000. The Robot Platform solution has a price of EUR 20.000, while August Invest is merely EUR 5.000.
Investment allocation implementation, tax and UCITS
As with the general August Invest Solutions the potential flipside of the extreme cost-efficiency, is that Investmentexcel.com only delivers the portfolio solution or proposal. Investor is hence responsible for actual portfolio implementation via own trading account in a bank, or by simply E-mailing the product-attached PDF file to a personal contact person in the bank.
The PDF file is detailed and constitutes also a trading ticket (slip) that can be applied readily by investor or bank contact. The content of the trade ticket is identical to the trade ticket that an external bank portfolio manager would submit to the market.
In between rebalancing from investmentexcel.com the underlying funds of the solution pays out some dividends. Dividend payments will normally accrue to your cash account in your local currency. Dividends are subject to local tax laws as are of course any realized and unrealized asset values.
Investmentexcel.com is a gross (but after cost) return, as are most other distributors in the financial investment community. Any cash available stemming from dividends in-between rebalancing, can be reinvested according to the new rebalanced profile at the time of rebalancing. If you want to learn more about how to rebalance your portfolio see here.


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We do not know her real name. But she was known to some as Nirbhaya, the 'fearless one' who valiantly fought her rapists, or Damini, the 'lightning' that struck the conscience of India—and the entire world.
I share India's angst at the death of the 23-year-old student savagely violated in New Delhi on 16 December. This incident lays bare an ugly truth that is relevant not only in India but in every country, every day: the rights and potential of every young girl are at risk from gender-based violence.
Women have the same rights as men, and this means they are entitled to be safe at home, on the street or in the workplace.
Data shows that in 2011, there were more than 75,000 cases of rape, molestation and sexual harassment in India. These reported cases are the tip of the iceberg, and conviction rates are low: about 27 per cent.
In India as elsewhere, legislative and criminal justice systems have a role to play in stopping gender-based violence. But other institutions—such as public transportation and schools and universities—must also do their part. Health care systems must be equipped to recognize and respond to gender based violence, immediately, with sensitivity, respect and privacy. Protocols must be in place so that a survivor of violence receives the physical and psychological care which is her due and that health facilities have staff who are trained and equipped to gather forensic information that can facilitate the speedy administration of justice.
I speak to the people of India and every other country when I say that we need to teach boys at an early age to respect girls and women, and allow boys and girls to build relationships based on equality and mutual respect. Men and boys must become more central to processes of promoting and protecting the human rights of women. These attitudes need to be inculcated in families and in schools. Popular media must also use its reach to reinforce this message. Men of all ages are a part of this fight against violence as has already been demonstrated by large numbers in Delhi.
I call upon the leadership of India to rise to this sombre occasion and not only promise, but create a nation that is safe for every girl and every woman, anywhere, anytime, where safety is not incumbent on what women wear, what they do, or time of day.
The United Nations Population Fund stands ready to support the Government of India in this mission to take every step necessary from sensitisation to reform and time-bound administrative and legal action. Gender-based violence thrives on a culture of silence, acceptance and apathy. Therefore, the voices of people must not go unheard. Not this time.
I join India's resolve to ensure that this time intent matches action, and that the nation's response matches the invincible spirit of the 23-year old.

subset: commoncrawl


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Alan Bersin, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, arrives at the gloomy US border post in Nogales, Arizona, early one winter morning wearing an expression of mildly pained concentration.
He got up before dawn and now looks as if he'd rather be anywhere else. In the immigration lanes downstairs, a procession of pickups and SUVs nudge dejectedly in from Mexico, taillights blinking through a relentless drizzle. Bersin arrived late, and he seems in no mood to assess the state of the art in automated psychophysiological evaluation technology. Yet there it is, pushed up against the wall of a cramped back office at the DeConcini Port of Entry: a gray metal box about the size and shape of an ATM, with two softly glowing video monitors, one on top of the other.
Bersin, a self-assured bureaucrat and a Rhodes Scholar who studied at Oxford with Bill Clinton, approaches the device. The lower monitor displays an icon of an oversize red button; the upper screen shows the head and shoulders of a smoothly rendered, computer-generated young man blinking and occasionally suffering a slight electronic shudder. He appears to be in his twenties and has an improbably luxuriant head of blue-black hair combed back in a sumptuous pompadour. This is the Embodied Avatar, the personification of the latest software developed to help secure the nation's frontiers by delivering what its creator calls "a noninvasive credibility assessment"—sifting dishonest travelers from honest ones. Which is to say, this late-model Max Headroom is a lie detector.
Suspicious behavior detected.
Wait for an agent.
Bersin taps the red button to start the test, and in an agreeable Midwestern voice, the avatar asks Bersin a series of questions.
"Are you a citizen of the United States of America?"
"Yes," Bersin says.
"Have you visited any foreign countries in the past five years?"
"Do you live at the address you listed on your application?"
When the interview is over, Bersin turns to the other people in the room—his entourage, a delegation from the Canadian border agency, and the engineers who are anxiously overseeing this most critical test yet of their invention.
One technician explains to Bersin how the kiosk has instantly analyzed his responses, displayed on a rubber-jacketed iPad and broken down into categories of risk: green, yellow, and red. Bersin's mask of barely suppressed boredom does not crack.
But then the technician points out that one of his answers is flagged in red: The machine is suspicious about his address. Bersin acknowledges that, yes, what he usually describes as his home is not actually where he lives, and that he was thinking about something else when he was answering—it's just that he has a work residence in Washington, DC, but of course his family home remains back in San Diego and —
Bersin's counterpart from Canada, a former intelligence officer, interrupts, cracking an interrogator's indulgent smile: "Do you have a lawyer?"
Afterward, Jay Nunamaker, the sardonic computer engineer overseeing the Embodied Avatar project, allows himself a low chuckle. "I don't think it could have gone better," he says. Within a few hours, the young man with the improbable hair is interviewing members of the public. The first field tests of the US government's state-of-the-art computer-controlled lie-detection device have begun.
Since September 11, 2001, federal agencies have spent millions of dollars on research designed to detect deceptive behavior in travelers passing through US airports and border crossings in the hope of catching terrorists. Security personnel have been trained—and technology has been devised—to identify, as an air transport trade association representative once put it, "bad people and not just bad objects." Yet for all this investment and the decades of research that preceded it, researchers continue to struggle with a profound scientific question: How can you tell if someone is lying?
That problem is so complex that no one, including the engineers and psychologists developing machines to do it, can be certain if any technology will work. "It fits with our notion of justice, somehow, that liars can't really get away with it," says Maria Hartwig, a social psychologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who cowrote a recent report on deceit detection at airports and border crossings. The problem is, as Hartwig explains it, that all the science says people are really good at lying, and it's incredibly hard to tell when we're doing it.
In fact, most of us lie constantly—ranging from outright cons to minor fibs told to make life run more smoothly. "Some of the best research I've seen says we lie as much as 10 times every 24 hours," says Phil Houston, a soft-spoken former CIA interrogator who is now CEO of QVerity, a company selling lie-detecting techniques in the business world. "There's some research on college students that says it may be double and triple that. We lie a ton." And yet, statistically, people can tell whether someone is telling the truth only around 54 percent of the time, barely better than a coin toss.
The Interrogation Bot
Just three sensors tell the Embodied Avatar kiosk everything it needs to know about whether someone is telling the truth. An infrared camera records eye movement and pupil dilation at up to 250 frames per second—the stress of lying tends to cause the pupils to dilate. A high-definition video camera captures fidgets such as shrugging, nodding, and scratching, which tend to increase during a deceptive statement. And a microphone collects vocal data, because lies often come with minute changes in pitch. Future versions of the machine might go even further—a weight-sensing platform could measure leg and foot shifts or toe scrunches, and a 3-D camera could track the movements of a person's entire body. —Sara Breselor
For thousands of years, attempts to detect deceit have relied on the notion that liars' bodies betray them. But even after a century of scientific research, this fundamental assumption has never been definitively proven. "We know very little about deception from either a psychological or physiological view at the basic level," says Charles Honts, a former Department of Defense polygrapher and now a Boise State University psychologist specializing in the study of deception. "If you look at the lie-detection literature, there's nothing that ties it together, because there's no basic theory there. It's all over the place."
Despite their fixation on the problem of deceit, government agencies aren't interested in funding anything so abstract as basic research. "They want to buy hardware," Honts says. But without an understanding of the mechanics of lying, it seems that any attempt to build a lie-detecting device is doomed to fail. "It's like trying to build an atomic bomb without knowing the theory of the atom," Honts says.
Take the polygraph. It functions today on the same principles as when it was conceived in 1921: providing a continuous recording of vital signs, including blood pressure, heart rate, and perspiration. But the validity of the polygraph approach has been questioned almost since its inception. It records the signs of arousal, and while these may be indications that a subject is lying—dissembling can be stressful—they might also be signs of anger, fear, even sexual excitement. "It's not deception, per se," says Judee Burgoon, Nunamaker's research partner at the University of Arizona. "But that little caveat gets lost in the shuffle."
The US Army founded a polygraph school in 1951, and the government later introduced the machine as an employee-screening tool. Indeed, according to some experts, the polygraph can detect deception more than 90 percent of the time—albeit under very strictly defined criteria. "If you've got a single issue, and the person knows whether or not they've shot John Doe," Honts says, "the polygraph is pretty good." Experienced polygraph examiners like Phil Houston, legendary within the CIA for his successful interrogations, are careful to point out that the device relies on the skill of the examiner to produce accurate results—the right kind of questions, the experience to know when to press harder and when the mere presence of the device can intimidate a suspect into telling the truth. Without that, a polygraph machine is no more of a lie-detector than a rubber truncheon or a pair of pliers.
As a result, although some state courts allow them, polygraph examinations have rarely been admitted as evidence in federal court; they've been dogged by high false-positive rates, and notorious spies, including CIA mole Aldrich Ames, have beaten the tests. In 2003 the National Academy of Sciences reported that the evidence of polygraph accuracy was "scanty and scientifically weak" and that, while the device might be used effectively in criminal investigations, as a screening tool it was practically useless. By then, other devices and techniques that had been touted as reliable lie detectors—voice stress analysis, pupillometry, brain scanning—had also either been dismissed as junk science or not fully tested.
But spooks and cops remain desperate for technology that could boost their rate of success even a couple of points above chance. That's why, in 2006, project managers from the Army's polygraph school—by then renamed the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment—approached Nunamaker and Burgoon. The government wanted them to build a new machine, a device that could sniff out liars without touching them and that wouldn't need a trained human examiner: a polygraph for the 21st century.
A former college wrestler from Pittsburgh, Nunamaker is a leathery 75-year-old who trained as a mechanical engineer, and his methodical approach to problem-solving has carried him through four decades of developing software. He became interested in deception in the '90s, while building teleconferencing and collaboration software for corporate-scale behemoths including IBM and the US Army and Air Force. His clients suspected that many of their employees' contributions were often deliberately misleading, warped by self-interest and interdepartmental rivalry. Nunamaker discovered that he could pick out liars by looking for a statistical prevalence of evasive language and "hedging words," and he became fascinated with the ways deceitful employees betray themselves.
Burgoon, 64, a brisk and polished psychologist with cropped silver hair, had already done a decade of military-funded deception-detection work when she began collaborating with Nunamaker 12 years ago—both were at the University of Arizona working, it turned out, on similar projects. Burgoon specialized in examining deceit as part of interpersonal communication, a laborious, time-consuming, and—compared with the twitching needles and brain scanning at the other end of the field—unglamorous area of research. Nunamaker suggested they collaborate; her psychology background complemented his engineering expertise.
Instead of simply measuring signs of physiological arousal, Burgoon analyzed liars' body movement—expressions and gestures—and linguistic cues. Like Nunamaker, she had established that liars tend to hedge, equivocate, or fail to deny things directly. One recent study, using publicly available recordings of 911 calls from Florida and Ohio, found that using vague language about things like location and details of the crime often correlated with the caller being the perpetrator. Other research has shown that dishonest stories tend to be better structured than honest ones, although in the end the true story may seem more coherent. True narratives feature richer sensory detail, more direct speech, and more spontaneous corrections. "Deceivers are not going to say, 'Well, I can't remember that, I forgot that,'" Burgoon says. "They'll make something up."
For years, Burgoon collected linguistic data the hard way, transcribing interviews and marking them up by hand. Analyzing body movement was even more painstaking. Trained coders watched video of experimental subjects for hundreds of hours and logged each cue they saw—one blink, a slight smile—manually, using a pen and paper. One research project involved 300 videotaped interviews; the coding took three years. Analyzing the audio was even harder. Burgoon worked with specialists who attempted to hear the changes in vocal pitch in individual phonemes, the units of sound that make up words. Expanding to whole conversations proved almost impossible. "They were used to dealing with a phoneme, not with an entire utterance, much less an entire interview," Burgoon says.
When they first began working together in 2000, Nunamaker found it hard to believe that nobody had tried using machines to simplify this data collection. "It drove me crazy," he says. So Burgoon and Nunamaker started tracking body movement with software that superimposed computer-generated blobs over the video of interviewees; now computer vision tools can find a human being in an image and track more than 80 different landmarks on the face alone. Using transcripts of interviews with indicted Air Force personnel—whose lies were pretty well documented—they worked on artificial-intelligence tools to analyze language, counting hedging words and tracking pronoun use. (This evolved into a suite of software Burgoon dubbed the Agent99 Analyzer—she liked the idea of naming it after the female sidekick from Get Smart, famously more competent than her male boss.)
Eventually, Nunamaker and Burgoon came to believe that no single technology could solve the problems of lie detection. "There is no silver bullet answer—which is what everybody wants," Nunamaker says. "It's going to be this basket of cues and figuring out whether you've got the right cues in the basket." But they also knew that computers could detect the signs they'd identified. The researchers decided to combine as many sensors as possible in a single lie-detecting toolbox. By monitoring potentially hundreds of different psychophysiological, linguistic, and verbal cues, their hypothetical machine would spot tells in even the most polished liar. "A human can only control three or four at a time—so cues leak out no matter how hard you try," Nunamaker says.
One of the first government agencies interested in Nunamaker and Burgoon's work was the Department of Homeland Security. DHS paid for early data collection at the border station at Nogales, a project in which the researchers filmed travelers during screening interviews and then compared their linguistic and physical cues to the way customs officers rated them after screening. But the Science and Technology Directorate at DHS believed that even a working lie detector wouldn't be good enough to fight terrorism. They didn't just want to know when someone was lying—they wanted to look for signs that the person intended to do bad things, or "malintent." So before Nunamaker and Burgoon finished their fieldwork in Nogales, they say, DHS asked them to abandon it and instead study the relationship between emotions, physical cues, and malintent—specifically incorporating the microexpression theories of Paul Ekman.
Ekman is a divisive figure. Now 78, his work on lie detection has made him a rock star among behavioral psychologists, with a best-selling book, a profitable consulting business, and a network TV drama—Lie to Me—inspired by his research. In 1969 he theorized that facial muscles that expressed seven human emotions also created "microexpressions" that could reveal concealment, despite the fact that these microexpressions last just 0.04 second. Ekman claims that with his training, it's possible to spot microexpressions and successfully detect deception 70 percent of the time, increasing this to almost 100 percent if other body movements are taken into account.
In 2006 Ekman and his team spent 30 days training TSA officers to read microexpressions as part of a program called SPOT—Screening Passengers by Observational Techniques. These officers deployed to 161 airports across the US. According to the TSA, from January 2006 through March 2012, SPOT officers referred more than 331,280 travelers for secondary screening, but the merest fraction were arrested—just 2,270. In that time, at least 16 people involved in terrorism cases passed unchallenged through airport checkpoints manned by SPOT personnel—some of them more than once. Nobody outside the TSA knows what SPOT officers are looking for, since the details remain classified. The agency admits to being uncertain that it has yet detained a single terrorist. Charles Honts, who was trained by Ekman, says that all his attempts to replicate Ekman's experiments have failed, and in 2009 the researchers studying airports and border crossings found no evidence that microexpressions reliably betray concealed emotion or can be used to detect deceit. The next year the Government Accountability Office reported that the TSA's scheme had never been scientifically tested. (Ekman disputes these criticisms. Of the 9/11 hijackers, for example, he says, "If the behavior that people reported them showing did occur, it would certainly have been picked up by SPOT.")
Nunamaker and Burgoon didn't want to abandon their fieldwork, and they didn't want to focus on microexpressions. "There's not a lot of science to back up Ekman's claims," Nunamaker says. "Applying them to deception detection is a reach." The project manager pulled their funding—because, Nunamaker says, he wouldn't switch the focus of his work. DHS moved ahead with Ekman's research. The new behavioral forecasting program—Future Attribute Screening Technology—is so secret that even Burgoon has no idea what it does.
After falling out with DHS, Nunamaker and Burgoon pressed on. They won new funding from the Pentagon and other agencies. Customs and Border Protection, for example, wanted to help overburdened customs officers screen immigration lines at borders, so the two decided to combine their lie-detecting toolbox with an idea other deception researchers were already playing with: a computer-generated interrogator.
An avatar interrogator has many advantages over its human counterparts. It's consistent, tireless, and susceptible to neither persuasion nor bribery. Douglas Derrick, a researcher at the University of Nebraska who studies human-computer interaction and has worked on the Embodied Avatar since 2007, even suspects that people fear the power they feel it embodies. "They view it as the personification of the system," Derrick says. "They believe they're talking to the computer." One early version was a menacing shaven-headed character nicknamed Scary Guy. On the other hand, Nunamaker says, Las Vegas casinos, which fund their own deception research to catch cheats, have had more success giving casino-goers screen-based directions and advice with avatars that resemble cartoons. Derrick even tried using a camera and morphing software so that an avatar would increasingly resemble the person in front of it, reflecting research that suggests you're more likely to trust someone who looks like you. The one thing they all had in common was skirting the edges of the uncanny valley, where characters look just human enough to be disturbing. "I think we're close with this one," Derrick says of the thick-haired young man used in Nogales. "It's realistic, but we're not in the valley."
The team dug into commercially available lie-detection technology, but most proved unusable. A thermal-imaging camera was enormous and required a cooling fan so noisy that it drowned out the other equipment. The laser Doppler vibrometer, which could monitor blood pressure from 10 feet away, could be circumvented by anyone wearing a turtleneck or even a beard. And the lie/truth analyzer, built into vocal dynamics software provided by the Israeli company Nemesysco, was hopeless under experimental conditions.
Despite those failings, Nunamaker and Burgoon thought that some of the gadgets had potential. Arizona grad student Aaron Elkins found that the Nemesysco software really was finding a correlation between vocal stress and deception, so he wrote his own algorithms to do the same thing—to measure cues like hesitation, changes in tempo and intonation, and spoken errors. It worked; Elkins' approach can identify deceitful speech 75 percent of the time in an experimental setting, and speech dynamics now provide key data points used by the technology being tested in Nogales.
Now, using just three sensors, they can collect as many as 50 different psychophysiological and vocal deception cues. A microphone gathers vocal information. An HD video camera captures body movement—for example, the sudden freezing of a liar attempting to control physical tells. And an infrared camera monitors pupil dilation and gaze pattern. Some of the team's most successful experiments have shown that eye flicker correlates to deception: Examining images of falsified documents, for example, subjects often cannot help looking repeatedly at the details they've doctored.
We lie 10 times a day. But we can tell someone is lying just half the time. Using physiological and vocal data, computers can do better. Phil Houston
Separately, these streams of data can provide a good picture of when test subjects might be lying—in the lab, information from the eyes alone correctly flagged liars 60 percent of the time. But when the avatar kiosk combines the data from eye and voice analysis, its accuracy spikes. In an experiment in Poland last year using 37 EU border guards, some of whom were asked to present false documents, the kiosk identified every one of the liars. Taking into account two false positives, the machine scored 94 percent. Human agents asked to perform the same task failed to stop a single impostor.
Yet the success of such experiments has depended on the context of the interrogation. In October 2011, as Nunamaker's team began readying a version of the device for the field tests in Nogales, he admitted that he still wasn't certain how it would perform in the outside world: "We really don't know, until we test it at the border with real people who don't have a vested interest in the system working."
Two months later in Nogales, a uniformed customs officer introduces the avatar kiosk to the public for the first time. In line are a mother and daughter from Tucson, a well-dressed couple from over the border in Mexico, and a portly retiree in a baseball cap there to renew his trusted-traveler card. Each is here as part of a fast-track border crossing program and is first screened by a cheerful immigration specialist trained in interviewing and behavioral analysis techniques. Then they meet the young man with the luxuriant hair. The avatar is set up to deliver the standard final set of questions asked of anyone trying to join a trusted-traveler program. Giving their yes-or-no answers to a five-minute robotic catechism, they seem curious or bemused or visibly anxious. One girl, eager to meet the machine after she heard there was a lie detector in the building, behaves as if she's trying her luck on a carnival midway, giddy and excited. On his way out, the old man remarks, "For guys, you might want to make it look like Salma Hayek."
The Nogales field test, intended to reveal the kind of limitations only everyday use can show, has led to further revisions of the kiosk. It's now bilingual, speaking both English and Spanish, and new lab versions have a camera that can collect eye data regardless of the height of the person it's interrogating. Eventually, if the machine flags a traveler as potentially deceptive, that person will be questioned further by a human customs officer. If the traveler triggers no alert, the machine will tell them they're free to go.
When the avatar catches him out, even commissioner Bersin—soon afterward promoted to assistant secretary of international affairs and chief diplomatic officer at DHS—seems to see its potential. He tells a group of customs officers at the DeConcini crossing station that he hopes the kiosk will soon check more and more people coming across the border. "We start off in this more controlled setting, but eventually the payoff is getting it into the lanes," he says.
Customs and Border Protection initially expressed interest in installing five kiosks in each of nine different customs stations, where they would conduct preliminary screening for the Nexus and Sentri programs. Budget issues have now postponed those plans, but last year the research team spent a month showing the machine to several DHS agencies in Washington, DC, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, TSA, and the Secret Service. Nunamaker, Burgoon, and their colleagues now have funding to research countermeasures and identify the ways people might successfully beat the machine. Meanwhile, the TSA's FAST program, built around Paul Ekman's ideas, has been beset by controversy and technical difficulties. TSA officials now say the agency has no plan to deploy it.
Back in December, the last interviewee of the day at the DeConcini crossing station in Nogales is a stocky Mexican engineer wearing an Otis Elevator ID card around his neck. "So this is the future, huh?" he says at the end of his five-minute interrogation, his face unreadable. "Nice."
It is not yet 5 pm, but it's been a long day of cross-examinations. The customs officer pulls her uniform jacket on over her gun and equipment belt and heads into the rain for home. In the corner of the office, the tech from the university clicks on a wireless mouse a few times. The screen on the Embodied Avatar kiosk flickers, and the device goes to sleep where it stands.
Adam Higginbotham (firstname.lastname@example.com) wrote about the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in issue 19.05.Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.


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There is certainly a "wow" factor to the new Riverview High School.
Teachers, administrators, custodians and others all enter the school in a semi-awed silence more apropos to a cathedral than a high school. Students — when they returned to school — no doubt reacted the same way.
From the mix of the classic to the modern, from the Paul Rudolph influence to the glass to the football-field-size courtyard, the school is gorgeous. BMK Architects and Perkins + Will Architects captured what school leaders wanted and more, and the construction and workmanship by W.G. Mills brought it to life.
Principal Linda Nook is taking full advantage of the opportunity to instill not just pride, but also responsibility among the students. She created an acronym based on the school mascot. RAMS stands for responsible, attentive, motivated and safe, and she is taking aim directly at seniors to set the example.
All great. But gorgeous doesn't come cheap. This school cost a fortune. By all Sarasota and regional standards, Riverview High School is a gold-plated school in a district that never, ever has enough money — or so its leaders claim.
The school cost $120 million — and that was under budget because the district luckily benefited from building during the construction downturn. Still, the price tag dwarfs the $55 million cost to build North Port High School, which opened in 2001. The Venice High School rebuilding is budgeted for $91 million in the next five years.
In fact, Riverview High School might be the most expensive high school ever built in Florida. In 1997, the most expensive high school was said to be Miami Northwestern at $75 million. The Florida Department of Education does not keep those figures, but a spokesman was literally "wowed" at the cost.
School officials caution against making the price comparisons, at least without caveats, because they say these are apples, oranges and star fruit comparisons.
Fair enough. Here are some of the caveats. Riverview is large, with a student capacity of 2,831 students.
But North Port's student capacity is 2,912, and Sarasota High School's is 2,989. I can't see how that accounts for much price difference. Another caveat is that Riverview was built under an enhanced building code. True, and that is bound to add some costs, but certainly not more than doubling the costs. So neither of these explains it.
Then there is the enormous amount of technology in the building, the retention of the original architectural flavor in the design, the heavy use of glass in the building, the one million brick pavers in the courtyard and the dozens and dozens of other amenities that drove up the cost.
As one school official knowledgeable of the project told me: "There were a lot of upgrades we won't do in other schools."
And when the bids came in, that school official said, "We all were shocked at the price tag." Yet the School Board members OK'd it anyway. Only the best for our kids!
Saying this may be the most expensive high school in Florida is one thing. But let's break it down by student. Say it lasts for 50 years. Frankly, in today's environment, that seems unlikely. But let's go with 50.
Riverview will get about 2,500 students per year. So, we will take our 50 years and multiply it by 2,500 students to get 125,000 student years (let's call them) during that time. However, high schools are four years, so the number of unique students during those 50 years is about 31,250. Some will move out, some will move in, but it is in the ball park.
That comes to $3,840 per student attending Riverview High school over the next half century. It is critical to remember that is just for the building and does not include other, ongoing capital costs such as computers, books, desks, chairs, school buses and so forth.
And that is all before the per-student cost that the school district publicly claims to spend each year. That is because the district will not include capital costs when it releases per-student spending, only operating costs. Those operating costs — alone — are fed to and duly reported in the local media and so the enormous cost of this magnificent school will never be included in the district's professed spending per student. It never shows up. We all just pay for it.
Given the colossal cost of educating a child in the public schools, taxpayers who footed the bill for this top-end project might reasonably ask: Was no expense spared?
The glistening answer is on Proctor Road.
Rod Thomson is executive editor of the Gulf Coast Business Review and can be reached at [email protected].
Here are some of the amenities in the new Riverview High School:
• One million paver bricks were used for the interior courtyard alone, which includes the Ram logo in paver.
• The gymnasium is big enough for two, full-size basketball courts and seats 2,200 people.
• The women's restroom in the new gym has 26 stalls; the men's has 15.
• The 1,100-seat auditorium will be the envy of theater companies and orchestras.
• The cafeteria has three full-service serving stations.
• Large patios on multiple levels overlook Phillippi Creek.


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Spreading software freedom worldwide
In introducing people to the concepts behind free software, we use the analogy that to use free software is to make a political and ethical choice asserting the right to learn, and share what we learn with others, where free software can be the foundation of a learning society -- where we share our knowledge in ways that others can build upon and enjoy.
This brings me to news of the release of our latest textbook, Introduction to the Command Line. It is now available for download or as a printed book from the GNU Press for $20. The book is released under the GNU Free Documentation License.
I realized from my involvement in the planning for this book -- from planning the book sprint organized by Adam Hyde of FLOSS Manuals, to the subsequent editing and production -- that we must all take responsibility for learning, understanding and using the command line as an extension of our support for free software. We must ourselves know how to work from the command line, understanding it as a right and a political necessity. We must be able to review and compile source code and be able to encrypt our data and correspondence. This kind of widespread literacy is an antidote to proprietary software.
Having easier and less powerful graphical user interfaces is absolutely fine, but we should see it only as a stepping stone towards empowering ourselves to use the same set of tools that a developer would use -- tools that give us individually more power and freedom on our own computers. The great news is, thanks to the no-nonsense examples given in this book, it is now much less daunting for newbies to learn than I had previously imagined. Please help spread this book, help translate this book, and encourage people to learn the command line as an extension of their support for free software.
In this issue of the FSF Bulletin, we have expanded the number of pages to give more space to free software activists campaigning around the world. The power of the Internet means that free software activism has no borders and we can work as a global community and aid each other in the actions we take locally. LibrePlanet.org is our contribution at attempting to connect all the users, developers and activists working on important campaigns, to empower them and raise their profile. We are also collecting links to all the important free software resources we can find and we are encouraging the formation of local and regional free software activist groups to take political action in support of free software. We hope that in building LibrePlanet, we can learn important lessons and improve our own outreach efforts.
This summer, why not spend some time helping to expand LibrePlanet.org and dip a toe into free software activism?


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The different green building authorities each approach fenestration material selection and use in slightly different ways but are all generally performance-based and encourage the use of life cycle analysis to determine environmental impact of any given material or product over its entire life span. A life cycle assessment endeavors to quantify and characterize all of the resource and pollution flows (inputs and outputs) associated with a particular material over its entire life cycle: from the harvesting or extraction of raw materials, through manufacture, installation, use, and reuse or disposal. The actual inputs and outputs are quantified in a life cycle inventory. They are then characterized according to their estimated contribution to environmental and health impacts. (Life cycle analysis definition from USGBC report cited below*)
USGBC is officially neutral on the use of PVC and is preparing to release a report that has been prepared by its Technical and Scientific Advisory Committee entitled "Assessment of Technical Basis for a PVC-Related Materials Credit in LEED®*. In this report, the group draws the conclusions that a scientific basis does not exist to support the de-selection of or any penalty for use of PVC and that "within product categories more and less desirable materials can be identified." (page 11, pp. 7-8).
Further, specific to use as a fenestration framing material, the group reports that:
"The results for windows are remarkably similar across the product alternatives. This is because the total life cycle results are not dominated by the frame material, but rather by the glazing and the usage phase energy use." (page 8, pp.32-34) and "Aggregated health impacts of carcinogens as well as particulate emissions show that the comparative performance of the window alternatives is entirely driven by differences in the energy efficiency of the studied alternatives. Thus, among our three frame types studied, the aluminum-framed window had the worst energy efficiency, while the wood and PVC-framed windows were virtually identical in efficiency. The proper conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that from a life cycle human health perspective, the key issue is window energy efficiency rather than frame material." (page 8, pp. 37-43)
USGBC's LEED® Homes, LEED for Homes is a voluntary rating system that promotes the design and construction of high performance "green" homes. USGBC began the pilot test of LEED for Homes in August 2005. As of May 2007, about 375 builders representing 6,000 homes across the U.S. are participating in the pilot program, and over 200 homes have been LEED certified. The LEED for Homes pilot rating system has been in pilot phase for over a year and a half. After project feedback, internal review, and approval by LEED Technical Advisory Committees, the rating system was open for public comment. The LEED for Homes Public Comment is open until midnight, July 14th, 2007.
Likewise, NAHB's Model Green Home Building Guidelines which are being adopted locally and are being promoted by the Green Building Initiative are material neutral, performance-based and encourage the use of energy efficiency as a material selection criterion. These guidelines also promote the use of materials that require no additional finish resources to complete application onsite (sec. 2.1.5).
Green Globes™, a competing green building program for commercial construction, is also material neutral, performance based and specifies the mandatory use of Energy Star for Windows (secs. 4.1-4.3)
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10/27/2020WDMA Fall Virtual Conference
4/14/2021Spring Meeting & Legislative Conference
6/8/2021Technical & Manufacturing Conference
10/6/2021Executive Management Conference


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Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) is trying to drum up interest with some of its largest competitors to create a multi-dealer U.S. bond trading platform at the same time that asset managers discuss ways to make buying and selling debt easier, according to people familiar with the matter.
Europe's biggest investment bank by revenue has pitched its plan for an electronic trading network to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Citigroup Inc. (C) and Barclays Plc (BARC), according to five people briefed on the talks, who asked to not be named because the discussions are private. Executives at State Street Corp. (STT) and FMR LLC's Fidelity Investments are among institutional investors that have held a series of meetings, the last one in July in New York, to address the difficulty of finding the bonds they want to trade, according to two different people.
The bank discussions on forming a platform and asset managers' search for solutions comes amid a 76 percent decline in corporate debt inventory at the world's biggest dealers since a 2007 peak. The pullback by market makers, which is spurring concern that the risk of trading disruptions has risen, comes amid stricter capital requirements from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and speculation that the U.S. Dodd-Frank Act will weaken their ability to facilitate bond trades.
"The industry is making progress," said Will Rhode, director of fixed-income research at consultant Tabb Group LLC in New York. "There are so many basic challenges, the market is fundamentally fragmented." The multilateral approach envisioned by Deutsche Bank is catching on with market users, he said. "The technology certainly exists, the desire exists," he said.
Private Transactions
Representatives for Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Barclays, State Street and FMR declined to comment.
Most trading takes place through privately negotiated transactions. Corporate bond dealers and investors have started to branch out into electronic-trading platforms as they seek to cut costs and improve their ability to convert investments into cash amid the new capital rules.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the fifth-largest U.S. bank by assets, has expanded its GSessions electronic-trading system. BlackRock Inc. (BLK), the world's biggest asset manager, decided this year to route some of its trades through MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (MKTX)'s computerized system.
Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, offers trading of bonds and credit-default swaps through its fixed-income trading platform.
Wary Clients
While clients have been wary of trading on platforms run by one bank, broker-dealers haven't agreed on parameters that would allow a single platform run by several companies to emerge, two people involved in the market said this week.
The platform, dubbed Oasis, from Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank is aimed at the least-active part of the $4.2 trillion-a-year market where bonds might not trade for days or weeks, two of the people said. It follows a more successful introduction of the same idea in Europe, according to one executive.
Oasis clients would tell their bank how much of a particular corporate bond they want to buy or sell, a process known as an indication of interest, and the dealer would enter a resting order into the electronic system, two of the people involved said. If another party is interested and the trade crosses, the transaction would be done between banks so that the clients remain anonymous, the people said.
Information leakage, or the possibility of rival investors profiting off an investor's plan to trade, is a major concern among bank clients that Oasis is meant to address, the people said. If the system succeeds, clients could eventually be allowed to access Oasis directly, they said.
Less Trading
Investors and their banks may have trouble moving more of the market onto computers. Corporate debt is unsuitable for full electronic trading, according to a study last month by McKinsey & Co. and Greenwich Associates. There are more bonds than stocks, and debt trades less frequently, making a full transition to computer-based buying and selling unlikely, the consultants said.
Dealers have resisted a shift to electronic bond trading because the increased transparency can cut profits. In the 90 days after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's Trace started disseminating prices of junk bonds, trading in the securities dropped 41 percent, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University researchers.
Investors Meet
Executives at Fidelity, the world's second-largest mutual fund company, and State Street, the third-biggest custody bank, met in May 2012 with representatives from Deutsche Bank, Barclays, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, urging the dealers to develop an electronic-trading system for bonds, people who attended the event said last year. The group has held a series of meetings this year, some with only institutional investors present, some with only banks, and some with market vendors, two people familiar with the matter said this week.
New trading systems like Goldman's GSessions are only part of the solution and other ways to buy and sell need to be developed, according to one of the meeting participants. These include electronic auction systems, a central database where limit orders are placed, and the resting order model like Oasis is proposing, the person said.
A continuing challenge is to get the banks to agree to support one solution, the participant said. Institutional investors met earlier this year to discuss a list of market changes they would like the dealers to implement, the person said, adding that a trading network that combined many ways to buy and sell debt in an aggregated fashion may be one promising idea.
The number of institutional investors participating in the meetings has grown to as many as 12 from 5 last year, while at least 8 banks have been involved, the person said.
Source : bloomberg


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Remember when the mainstream media and leftists everywhere flew into a rage because Rush Limbaugh associated 30-year-old Georgetown student Sandra Fluke with a rude word?
Do you also remember when the CEO of long-time Limbaugh sponsor Carbonite announced that his company could no longer associate itself with the EIB Network? Sure you do:
No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency.
Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.
Well, despite losing a few sponsors and having Media Matters lead a campaign to have him removed from the airwaves, Limbaugh is still here and he's still annoying the left.
Oh, yeah, and it appears Carbonite's decision to drop the EIB Network hasn't worked out so well for them.
"On August 1 Carbonite released its 2d Quarter 2012 results, the first full quarter after dropping Limbaugh in March. The results shocked Wall Street, as Carbonite did not meet its growth targets, causing multiple analysts to drop the target price," William A. Jacobson writes for Legal Insurrection.
"The stock dropped 15 [percent] in a day," he adds.
But the most interesting part about all of this is the fact that Carbonite CEO David Friend may have admitted on Wednesday that dropping Limbaugh hurt the company.
Here's a transcript of Friend's admission [via Legal Insurrection, emphasis added]:
Friend: "There were four factor that contributed to this slower growth. First, in March we stopped working with one of our top producing radio endorsers. While we recently contracted with three new radio personalities, it takes 3-6 months to ramp up new radio hosts so we probably won't see the full effect of this for another quarter or two."
Q: "I guess I'm a little surprised that you were caught by surprise by the radio host change 'cause I know we've talked and I guess my impression was that it wouldn't be that impactful but I guess it was quite impactful.
Friend: "Yeah, I'd say it turned out to be a bigger issue than we had anticipated. Because you know at the time there was a lot of noise, I mean we had a huge spike in web traffic around that time just because of all the interest in the whole subject. And it took close to a month for that to sort of die down. And meanwhile our metrics were, we really couldn't see what was going because there was so much noise around the website that we had no idea what the ultimate impact was going to be. It turned out to be a bigger hole in our revenue than we had thought when we initially did this. However, I don't think there was any, I'm not regretful of the decision, I think things would have been worse had we not done that.
"The last statement by Friend, that the damage would have been worse had Carbonite not dropped Limbaugh is laughable. Friend has been caught doing serious damage to shareholders based on a political decision which was taken precipitously on a Saturday night," Jacobson writes.
"It's too convenient now to say things would have been worse, when Friend completely misjudged the impact of dropping Limbaugh," he adds.
Follow Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) on Twitter
Click here to read Jacobson's full report, this story has been updated.
(H/T: Washington Examiner)


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Ever run into a person , who always seems so HAPPY? Yea we have too. People usually tell us , " you guys are always so happy, chipper, giggly, and always smiling .
Here are some tips on how to Be Happy! Enjoy :)
Have an Attitude of Gratitude
Take a few minutes out of your day to think about everything that has happened recently to make you smile. Yeah, it sounds a bit self-helpy, but according to Lyubomirsky, it works: "When you have to keep coming up with answers to the question 'What am I thankful for?' it forces you to see how the little things you might have overlooked or taken for granted play a role in your happiness."
Banish the Comparisons
Happy people take pleasure in the successes of other people rather than using those successes as a yardstick to measure their own lives. "You can't feel good about what you have if you're constantly calculating how you stack up to others," says Lyubomirsky. The irony is that in order to become less competitive (and a lot happier), you need to drop out of the race. That's not to say you should abandon your goals—it just means you need to start running at your own pace.
Find Meaning in Your Work
A study of a hospital's cleaning staff found that those who described their jobs as bettering the lives of others were more satisfied than those who considered their jobs less worthwhile. Experts also say that those of us who believe we're doing what we're destined to do feel more immediate and long-term happiness. Even if you're not jazzed about your current job, consider how your actions contribute to the common good. Or relish how it gives you the means to participate in pleasurable activities outside of work.
Hang with Happy People
A study done by the University of California at San Diego and Harvard Medical School revealed that "happiness can spread from person to person to person in a chain reaction, through social circles." On average, every happy friend you have increases your chance of being happy by 9 percent. Now if happiness is contagious, don't you want to put yourself in a position to catch it?


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The question is simple.
I'm giving 3 options here:
Yes: No one in your household owns a car. To make this clearer, "car" means any motor vehicle that you would have to own a license to use on the roadway. Motorcycles, too.
Share one car: In a household of multiple people of driving age, one car is shared between you. This can be a married couple, room-mates, life partners, whatever. If there is only one car and multiple adults in your domicile, click this option.
No: Either you're single with at least one motor vehicle, or there are multiple automobiles owned by people of-age in your dwelling.
In order to see this poll, you must visit KC Bike Commuting. It will be in the upper-right corner, as usual.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Poll: Car-Free Household?
The question is simple.
2 comments:
- Sirrus Rider said...
To be completely Car Free in Houston is death. It's my belief that when oil gets more expensive bikes will be used for trips close to home and motorized vehicles for trip traversing the city (with some exceptions like for extended distance bike commuters like me.)
- January 30, 2008 3:21 AM
- Apertome said...
We share one car. Sarah has never had a driver's license (in fact, I need to help her learn to drive). She walks and takes the bus for the most part. I of course ride to work ... so some days, the car never gets started.
It's a little weird, now that I think about it, that each of us uses some kind of alternative transportation when we go to our respective jobs, but we tend to get in the car to go places together. Maybe we can find a good way of getting around together that's not a car.
- January 31, 2008 10:21 AM
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News & Notes: Game 103
Follow the Herd:
Listen to the Game Live: CLICK HERE!
Bisons Baseball Network: CLICK HERE!
Email the Broadcast Team: CLICK HERE!
Everything about the Herd: CLICK HERE!
Get to a Bisons Game: CLICK HERE!
TODAY'S GAME: Tonight, the Buffalo Bisons take on the Toledo Mud Hens in the first game of a four-game series from Fifth Third Field (7:00 p.m.). The Herd is coming off a 3-1 series win at home against Pawtucket. Today's game is part of an eight-game roadtrip as the club will travel to Columbus for a four-game series after Wednesday's off day.
vs. THE HENS: The Bisons split a four-game series with the Mud Hens at Coca-Cola Field, July 16-19. The series included a Buffalo sweep of a doubleheader on July 18 with 1-0 and 2-0 scores. The Bisons won the season series a year ago 5-3 because they won three of the four games at Fifth Third Field.
PITCHING STAFF ON A ROLL: The Bisons' pitching staff has really excelled recently. The team has posted a stellar 1.86ERA over its last 10 games. During the stretch, Herd hurlers have struck out 65 and allowed just 75 hits in 87.0 innings of work. Last night's game was the first time in 10 games the team issued more than two walks in a contest (5 last night). Overall, the Bisons pitching staff is up to the 4th best in the International League (3.72ERA).
ON THE SNYD: RHP Kyle Snyder makes his third consecutive start for the Bisons tonight. The versatile pitcher has made seven starts and 19 relief appearances for the Herd this year. He threw five innings and struck out six batters on Monday in Indianapolis. He made one appearances against Toledo as a reliever, allowing a run in two innings of work.
THE HITS KEEP COMING: OF Jesus Feliciano has matched a personal season-high with his current eight-game hit streak. Since July 24, Feliciano has averaged .344 (11-32) with two doubles and five runs scored. Feliciano also hit in eight straight, July 6-16 (.387, 12-31). Feliciano ranks 5th in the International League in average (.312) and 4th in total hits (110).
McNAB'N VICTORIES: RHP Tim McNab enters today's game with a 12.2 consecutive scoreless innings streak. The stretch is the longest on the year for a Bisons reliever. He also leads the bullpen with five wins. McNab is now 5-2 with an impressive 1.90ERA in 42.2 innings of work this season.


text: Living in Sydney means you have plenty of options in choosing a new home. But not all apartments are created equal. So, never make your selection based on an invigorating whiff of polished wood or a grand view alone. Remember, you are going to be making this space your home so check for all the living essentials including: [FONT="] [/FONT]Safety features [FONT="] [/FONT]Plumbing and electrics [FONT="] [/FONT]Water pressure and temperature [FONT="] [/FONT]Neighboring noise and safety What other things can you suggest?


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Nursing Major Earns Opportunity to Study in South Africa
A transition from sprawling open spaces to a teaming city awaits sophomore Lauren Stephens. Stephens will spend next semester studying with the School for International Training's Community Health and Social Policy Program in Durban, South Africa.
Professor Challenges Students to Combat Poverty
Augustana's Dr. Mike Wanous challenged his Genetics students to compete in raising money to combat poverty in the world. At semester's end, the team that raised the most money would be able to "do whatever they wanted" with Dr. Wanous' hair.
Alumnus Cited as Music Teacher who Makes a Difference
Nate Sletten, Augustana class of 2008, has been cited by School Band and Orchestra (SBO) as an educator who makes a difference. The report states: "With educators such as these among the rank and file, the future of music education is as bright as ever."
Two Augustana Alums Performing with Professional Choir
Augustana alums Deanna Levsen Wehrspann, class of 1980, and Tami Anderson Hayzlett, class of 1983, auditioned and were selected to sing in the premier performance of the 20-voice chamber choir South Dakota Chorale.
Students' Research Appears in Physics Publication
Augustana students Russ Averin, Neal Gregerson, and Bethany Jochim are co-authors of a paper published in the January 14, 2010, issue of the Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics.
Four Elected to Augustana Board of Trustees
Delegates attending the Augustana Association's annual meeting on December 4, elected four Augustana alums to serve on the College's Board of Trustees. The board sets policy and manages the business and academic affairs of the College.
Director of Campus Safety Plays Part in SD Honor Flights
Augustana Director of Campus Safety Rick Tupper serves as the Vice-Chairman for Honor Flight, which takes South Dakota's World War II veterans to see their memorial in Washington, D.C. After four completed flights, Honor Flight is looking ahead to more trips in 2010.
Augustana students co-author article in Physical Review A
Four current Augustana students join two alums as co-authors of a paper published in the December 2009 issue of Physical Review A, a section of the Physical Review journal dedicated to atomic, molecular, and optical physics research.
Argus Leader: Dave Krauth Records 400th Career Win
An 84-63 win over St. Cloud State Sunday night at the Sioux Falls Arena gave head women's basketball coach Dave Krauth his 400th career win. Krauth has been a head coach at Augustana for 21 seasons and has a career record of 400-186.
Augustana Student Creates New Sioux Falls Transit Logo
Sarah Karlstad, a sophomore art major from Mitchell, SD, designed the new logo unveiled today by Sioux Falls Transit (SFT). Earlier this year, SFT introduced new buses with an updated look and decided to update the name and logo as well.


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Record-setting afternoon for Jackson
The Tampa Tribune
, published 21 October 2013
For the second consecutive week, Bucs wide receiver Vincent Jackson put up big numbers in defeat. Targeted on half of Mike Glennon's 44 pass attempts, Jackson finished with 10 receptions for 138 yards and two scores.
He made a one-handed grab on a 59-yard touchdown in the second quarter and added a 1-yard scoring catch that pulled Tampa Bay within 24-17 in the third quarter after Brian Leonard forced a fumble during Robert Alford's punt return. "We're playing hard to the end, but once again, it's self-inflicted wounds that are hurting us,'' said Jackson, the first Buccaneer to post consecutive 100-yard receiving games since Antonio Bryant in 2008.
Jackson, who caught nine passes for 114 yards and two touchdowns last week against Philadelphia, is the first player in franchise history with back-to-back games of at least 100 receiving yards and two touchdown catches.
Douglas has career day against Bucs
For most of Sunday's game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 13-time Pro Bowl tight end Tony Gonzalez served as an effective 6-foot-5 decoy. With Atlanta wide receivers Julio Jones and Roddy White out with injuries, Gonzalez figured to be Matt Ryan's favorite target against the Bucs, but Harry Douglas stole the spotlight.
While Gonzalez was limited to two catches for 30 yards, Douglas torched Tampa Bay's secondary in the opening half with six receptions for 140 yards, including a 37-yard touchdown when he got behind rookie cornerback Johnthan Banks. "Harry had a career day,'' Falcons coach Mike Smith said. "Harry's role changed two weeks ago because of our situation at wide receiver. He stepped up to the plate and did an extremely good job today. He was the No. 1 receiver in the game.''
En route to only his second career 100-yard effort, Douglas also hauled in a 54-yard pass against cornerback Leonard Johnson as Ryan finished with a career-high 148.4 passer rating. "Harry played a great game,'' said Ryan, now 34-2 when he registers a passer rating of 100.0 or higher. "I don't think anyone in that locker room was surprised with the way he played.''
All week long, Bucs coach Greg Schiano said Tampa Bay's secondary couldn't afford to go to sleep on Atlanta's receiving corps just because White and Jones would be inactive. "We knew Douglas was the third receiver,'' Bucs cornerback Darrelle Revis said. "He had a great game today.''
Ominous start
The game was only three minutes old when Bucs quarterback Mike Glennon looked every bit like a rookie making his first NFL road start. Tampa Bay's initial possession ended disastrously as Glennon fumbled when hit by blitzing William Moore, with fellow safety Thomas DeCoud picking up the ball and dashing 30 yards to give the Falcons a quick 7-0 advantage.
"They blitzed me and I was looking for my hot guy,'' said Glennon, who was sacked three times. "I wasn't able to get it to him, but that's on me. I have to hold on to the ball. No one else is to blame but myself, but I am going to get that corrected.''
Moore came free up the middle and forced the turnover as he was dragging Glennon down to the ground. "It was a great play call by (defensive coordinator) Mike Nolan,'' Moore said. "They had a young quarterback in the game and we decided to send a little pressure toward him and see how he adjusted.''


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Daniel Wellington Ladies' Classic Glasgow 36mm Silver Watch
Specifications of Daniel Wellington Classic Glasgow 36mm Silver Watch
- Size: 36mm
- Dial Color: Eggshell White
- Strap Color: Blue and White Nato
- Strap Width: 20mm
- Case Color: Silver
- Case Size: 6mm
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October 2012
Logan County FSA Updates
Logan County Committee Elections
Rural Youth Loans
The FSA's Rural Youth Loan program provides financial assistance and business planning to help rural youth get a start on their future, while ensuring the future of family farms. FSA makes loans to rural youths to establish and operate income-producing projects in connection with 4-H clubs, FFA and other agricultural groups. The maximum loan amount is $5,000. These loans may be used to finance nearly any agriculturally-based, income-producing project.
Interested youth should contact their local FSA office for additional information and an application.
USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer. To file a complaint of discrimination, write to USDA, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue, S.W., Stop 9410, Washington, DC 20250-9450, or call toll-free at (866) 632-9992 (English) or (800) 877-8339 (TDD) or (866) 377-8642 (English Federal-relay) or (800) 845-6136 (Spanish Federal-relay).


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Founded in 2006, Aeria has grown into a global presence, publishing games for PCs, browsers, tablets, and smartphones in nine different languages and in more than 30 countries. For years now, we have been a leading destination for free-to-play online multiplayer games.
Our growing community of over 70 million players is brought together on our universal platform, giving them quick and easy access to all of our games. From fantasy MMORPGs to action-packed shooters and everything in between, Aeria delivers a plethora of entertainment experiences that are bound to appeal to gamers of all kinds!


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Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW) today announced the installation of its distributed antenna system (DAS) in four of five medical buildings at Lake Nona Medical City, a 650-acre health and life science park in Orlando, Fla. The Corning DAS now delivers always-on wireless for thousands of doctors, patients, employees and students.
The Lake Nona project is a multi-billion dollar planned community, including health, medical research, residential, commercial and retail facilities. The medical campus includes the University of Central Florida Health Sciences Campus, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Nemours Children's Hospital, the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, and the University of Florida Academic and Research Center.
"As one of the largest medical campuses in the country, Lake Nona Medical City needed a solution to accommodate its medical treatment, research and education, and communications needs – current and future," said Mike O'Day, vice president, Wireless Networks, Corning Optical Communications. "Corning's distributed antenna systems support the broadest range of wireless technologies and applications, including wireless medical telemetry. We're proud that our solutions are deployed in hundreds of hospitals around the world."
Given the speed of development within the Lake Nona community and the unique wireless requirements of the medical facilities, Lake Nona teamed with Corning, the leading provider of optical communications, and wireless integrator Dais Technologies to provide enhanced wireless coverage and capacity in four of the medical buildings.
Dais selected Corning fiber and the MobileAccess2000 distributed antenna system, a multi-carrier platform that provides support for all cellular bands including 4G LTE.
"The community has experienced exponential growth. We've gone from about 400 jobs a year and a half ago to about 4,000 by the end of 2014. The VA Medical Center alone will see 4,000 to 5,000 patients a day," said Michael Voll, vice president of Dais Technology, LLC. "The Corning's fiber and DAS solution perfectly suited the specific requirements of this expansive project, which included enhanced cellular coverage, capacity, and support for medical telemetry, electronic medical records and public safety communications."
Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" (within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995), which are based on current expectations and assumptions about Corning's financial results and business operations, that involve substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include: the effect of global political, economic and business conditions; conditions in the financial and credit markets; currency fluctuations; tax rates; product demand and industry capacity; competition; reliance on a concentrated customer base; manufacturing efficiencies; cost reductions; availability of critical components and materials; new product commercialization; pricing fluctuations and changes in the mix of sales between premium and non-premium products; new plant start-up or restructuring costs; possible disruption in commercial activities due to terrorist activity, armed conflict, political or financial instability, natural disasters, adverse weather conditions, or major health concerns; adequacy of insurance; equity company activities; acquisition and divestiture activities; the level of excess or obsolete inventory; the rate of technology change; the ability to enforce patents; product and components performance issues; retention of key personnel; stock price fluctuations; and adverse litigation or regulatory developments. These and other risk factors are detailed in Corning's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the day that they are made, and Corning undertakes no obligation to update them in light of new information or future events.
About Corning Incorporated
Corning Incorporated (www.corning.com) is the world leader in specialty glass and ceramics. Drawing on more than 160 years of materials science and process engineering knowledge, Corning creates and makes keystone components that enable high-technology systems for consumer electronics, mobile emissions control, telecommunications and life sciences. Our products include glass substrates for LCD televisions, computer monitors and laptops; ceramic substrates and filters for mobile emission control systems; optical fiber, cable, hardware & equipment for telecommunications networks; optical biosensors for drug discovery; and other advanced optics and specialty glass solutions for a number of industries including semiconductor, aerospace, defense, astronomy, and metrology.


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"Be home by dinner," was a common refrain heard around my house when my children were growing up. My kids were given the freedom to just "play," without specific direction or adult intervention. They could walk or ride their bikes to the local park where they learned more about themselves than anywhere else. The park was a sacred space. My kids were able to experience lazy days in the park with nothing to guide them but their imaginations.
But sadly, times have changed, and compared to the 1970s, today's children spend 50 percent less time in unstructured outdoor activities. At Playworld Systems, we believe the world needs play, and children are growing up in an era where it's hard to come by. We're committed to having the pendulum swing back in the direction where kids are begging parents to get to the playground.
The playground is where children challenge themselves and each other. It's a place where "high-five" moments are made and remembered. You know, those moments where "I can't" or "I'm scared" shift into "I did it!" Those childhood memories are what we hope our equipment enables.
We aspire to create play environments that are meaningful and relevant to today's children. It's our job as a playground equipment manufacturer to design play structures that inspire memorable moments.
With a mission to save play and create more high-five memories for the children of Charlotte, North Carolina, Playworld Systems decided to donate several pieces of equipment to NRPA's Parks Build Community project at the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Park. The park will feature a collection of playground equipment that provides platforms for all kinds of play.
If you want to hang around with friends, then Unity is the climber for you. Cruise Line will give you wings. If you like climbing and reaching new heights, then Rushmore is calling your name. If flashing lights and sounds are more your speed, then the ever-popular NEOS 360 will get your competitive spirit pumping.
NRPA Annual Conference visitors will have the opportunity to experience our equipment in their native environment (i.e. in outdoor park space) first-hand when they attend the dedication of Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Park.
We believe this donation will result in endless play experiences, hopefully reminding us all about the power of play and motivating us to create more environments where kids rule, imaginations soar and bodies become active.
High-five moments are those that are shared with someone and can't occur in isolation. We want to encourage more of those memorable moments, where people of all ages come together in a shared space to accomplish and discover something together. Outdoor activity is often about shared discoveries and fun experiences. We hope that the playground installation at Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Park inspires people to come back time and time again to experience the power of play.
Kevin Cook is the director of sales for Playworld Systems.
How do you create more high-five moments in your community? Share in the comments below or tweet us a comment using #ParksBuildCommunity.
Editor's Note: To learn more about Charlotte's Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Park, the site of NRPA's 2014 Parks Build Community initiative, read the "Reaching New Heights" feature article found in the June 2014 issue of Parks & Recreation Magazine. You can also check out another blog post on the park, which highlights the critical need for good park access, and the webpage for the project, which includes contact info and details on previous Parks Build Community sites. Stay tuned for forthcoming details on the dedication event for Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Park, which will occur on Thursday, October 16, during the 2014 NRPA NRPA Annual Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. NRPA thanks donors Playworld Systems, Greenfields Outdoor Fitness, Poligon by Porter Corp. and Cornilleau USA for their contributions to this year's project.


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For stencils see STENCILS catagory
With fine-grained surface texture like sand. Dries with a white, matt and covering effect. Can be colored after drying.
Background should be clean, dust and grease-free and dry. Paste the numbered separate patterns on the chosen place and smooth out. Start with the lowest motif. Make sure to arrange the separate motifs close to each other (step 1).
Dab the desired paint on the motif. We recommend for dabbing: a dry stencil brush or a paint roller (see next page). Use only a little paint and apply paint from outer border of motif to inside to avoid that paint gets under the stencil.Try out other techniques on a sheet of paper. In order to increase the color intensity, after color application allow the stencil to stick on the surface to be decorated; let color dry. Apply paint to the chosen places repeatedly. Apply several thinner layers instead of one thick layer, since otherwise the surplus of paint might get under the stencils. Just as well you may dab together two or more colors within one surface for a continued course of colors. Pull stencils off the wall carefully (step 2) and paint interspaces, if necessary, in respective color (step 3). Clean stencils and tools carefully with clear water or a moist cloth immediately after use. For drying and storing place each stencil on the silicone-coated papers inside the package.
Evenly plastered walls and wallpapers with no surface texture or grain are especially suitable. On mineral plaster, large stencils should be extra fastened.


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Hearing loss may be affecting you
From missing favorite sounds to missing out on all the fun, hearing loss impacts all aspects of your life.
What hearing loss sounds like
Better understand what a family member or friend with hearing loss might be experiencing.Learn more
Hearing aid options
There's a hearing solution that's just right for you.
Hearing & Activity Tracking
The hearing aid that tracks body and brain health.Learn More
Made for iPhone
Connect directly to your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Apple Watch via the TruLink Hearing Control app.Learn More
Invisible Products
Custom fit to each person, invisible hearing aids rest in the second bend of the ear canal, making them virtually undetectable to others. They are designed to be removed daily to promote good ear health.Learn More
Barely visible when worn, Receiver-in-Canal hearing aids (RIC) place the receiver (or speaker) inside the ear canal — connected to the power source by thin electrical wires. They provide a comfortable, open fit.Learn More
Completely-in-Canal hearing aids (CIC) are custom-made to fit completely in the ear canal. Only the tip of a small plastic "handle" shows outside the canal, which is used to insert and remove the instrument.Learn More
Behind-the-Ear hearing aids (BTE) are the world's most common style, with the hearing technology housed in a casing that rests behind the ear. A clear plastic acoustical tube directs amplified sound into an earbud or a customised earmold that is fitted inside the ear canal.Learn More
Like invisible hearing aids, In-the-Canals (ITC) are custom-fit to your unique ear, but the faceplate shows in the outer portion of the first bend.Learn More
In-the-Ear hearing aids (ITE) are also custom molded uniquely for you and feature a faceplate that shows in the outer portion of your ear.Learn More
Featuring patent-pending technology, this comfortable, nearly invisible device is designed to deliver all-day tinnitus relief.Learn More
Single-Sided Hearing
CROS solution that allows you to hear sounds in your weaker hearing ear by way of your healthy ear.Learn More


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Bradfield Senior College
The emancipation of the mind is endless. Dreams, thoughts and aspirations are often distorted, bringing the mind to a fragile and vulnerable state.
As I became increasingly interested in abstract art, I explored the process of abstracting the common features of objects and procedures through my art-making. The purpose of the work is not merely to create an image but rather to jolt a memory, create a feeling or set a mood. The viewer is invited to explore the feelings and thoughts evoked by the work and adapt their own 'life line'.
Investigate the art practice of Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Courtney Grigor. Consider their personal sense of place that is layered within the compositions. Discuss how artists' personal motives and meanings in art-making can connect to an audience. Investigate Kngwarreye's and Grigor's use of formal qualities such as line, shape and colour. How do these elements activate for the viewer a sense of action in, and experience of, place?